THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

March 26, 2003 - Two generations have come of age since a President from Texas assured us that the end of the war was not in doubt. He assured us that the people that we were fighting would have to submit to the overwhelming power of American arms. He believed that the path would be long and the sacrifices great, but that the end was not in doubt. That was the beginning of a decade long struggle that consumed a generation.

The children and grandchildren of the men who fought that war are the men and women who are called upon to fight this one. This President from Texas tells us that his path to victory may be long but the outcome is not in doubt. Like his predecessor he peers into the mouth of the tunnel, sees the light, but in his myopia does not recognize the headlights of an oncoming train.

The landscape is different. The jungles of Southeast Asia have given way to the sand of Asia Minor. We declared victory in 1991 not understanding that we had completed only the opening campaign of a war that would persist for another generation or more. We declared victory in Afghanistan after two months yet we still campaign and suffer casualties in a Kiplingesque struggle to force the twain of East and West to meet. We now take the Road to Baghdad.

The campaign to which the President has led us may well be a success as military minds define the term but it will not end the war. Baghdad will be but one of the One Thousand and One Tales of the Arabian Nights to which we and our children and grandchildren must listen while seeking shelter from the wind blowing out of Arabia.
Any one who has tried to negotiate the alleys and byways of an Arab Kasbah knows that the maze twists and turns and disaster lies around every corner.

We told ourselves that we would be welcomed with flowers on the Road to Baghdad. We have found that while one hand holds a bouquet, the other wields a dagger while we are blinded by the blowing sand. We have declared our war against a culture that extends its sway from the Pillars of Hercules to the Mandalay Strait, from Zamboanga to Zanzibar, and has persisted for a millennium despite the mightiest armies that Europe could send against it. It is a culture that does not accept defeat with cowed submission but rather patiently shrugs it away to await opportunity.

The Road to Baghdad is but one tale and we must endure the recitation of One Thousand more. The tunnel will not end on the Euphrates shore.